Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah deceived Congress by implying there was a 41% increase in wild horse & burro population in only 5 months, and by showing a photo of one thin horse and claiming that a majority of the wild horse population on the range were starving or dying from dehydration.
Stewart authored the Amendment in the House that would lead to 46,000 healthy wild horses & burros in BLM holding facilities and tens of thousands more on public lands being “euthanized” (killed).
Stewart has stooped to spreading false information about wild horses in an OpEd that appeared to in the New York Times titled “The Hard Truth About the West’s Wild Horse Problem.” Stewart continues to push for the killing of healthy wild horses & burros, both in his OpEd and in Congress.
Rep. Chris Stewart signing onto the SAFE Act was not only shocking, but the timing was interesting. It happened only about a month after Return to Freedom, ASPCA and HSUS signed onto a proposal that sells out America’s wild horses & burros.
Categories: Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Return to Freedom was paid $440,000 for Wildhorse/Burro Control Services (2000) by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Nevada).
What did we tax payers pay them to do to our wild horses???
https://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?company_name=return+to+freedom&sortp=r&detail=-1&datype=T&reptype=l&database=fpds&fiscal_year=&submit=GO&sum_expand=E
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US Fish & Wildlife? And Stewart is now a co-sponsor of the SAFE Act? That seems convenient.
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All of these agencies appear to hire the same livestock contractor(s)…and the Taxpayers pick up the tab
FISH & WILDLIFE
Foals killed, aborted and orphaned at Sheldon Wildlife Refuge (Photos on website)
Sheldon Fish and Wildlife Service Runs Foals to Exhaustion
and Leaves them to Die in the Desert.
(PHOTO ON WEBSITE) A foal tries to keep up with its dam during a helicopter pass.
Several never made it to the trap corrals.
27 June, 2006
By: Valerie James Patton, Susan Pohlman, and John Holland
On June 6th, the Special Research Group exposed a plan formulated by the Fish and Wildlife Service to eliminate the Sheldon range wild horses and pay “mass adopters” $300 a horse to take them. The report showed that one of the adopters was operating out of a stockyard used almost exclusively as a transshipment point for horses going to slaughter. The report went on to denounce the plans of FWS to hold a helicopter gather in mid-June which is the height of foaling season in that region.
The Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the massive public outcry, which included congressmen and even California Governor Schwarzenegger, by giving false assurances to all who inquired. Among other falsehoods, they stated that the foaling season was long over and that all the foals were at least three months old. Project manager Paul Steblein assured the public that they had done a helicopter survey and found all the foals in the refuge were at least three or four months old. The impossibility of such an assessment from the air was not lost on the horse advocates nor was the biological improbability. Their doubts and worst fears were soon to be justified.
The gather, was done on Tuesday, June 20th. Immediately after the gather, FWS announced that all the foals had arrived with their mothers, and that none had been hurt. But almost immediately, a foal was trampled in the pens and had to be taken away for medical care. The assertion that all of the foals had arrived safely with their mothers was belied by the fact that 16 to 18 of the mares showed signs of recently giving birth but had no foals with them.
FWS went on to say that only one adult horse had a minor injury. But there were horse advocates who knew better because they had listened to the radio communications between the FWS and the crews in the field as they discussed what to do with a horse with a broken leg. The decision had been made to shoot it.
The lies had only begun. The story of the lost foals began unfolding even as FWS personnel were busily cleaning up a stream of aborted foals from the mares in the holding pens. By Monday, the 26th, nine foals had either died at birth or been aborted in the pens, but there was worse news to come.
Thursday, stories began trickling into the Sheldon office of foals abandoned on the refuge and dying of exposure and dehydration. A rescue mission was launched on Friday. The CATOOR’S helicopter returned to the puzzlement of some uninformed onlookers, and an air ground search was made. To some it was a mission to rescue the foals, but to FWS it was more likely a mission to rescue the illusion of their humane gather. According to reports, by the end of the day, eight foals had been found. Five were dead and three were clinging onto life.
What we do know is they are government employees charged with protecting our common heritage, and that when challenged they came back with a clear answer that they do not work for us and they will do what they very well please!
http://www.aowha.org/notices/sheldon0602.html
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Case No. 06-1609 (D.D.C 2009), the Court ruled, to wit:
“It would be anomalous [not in agreement with] to infer that by authorizing the custodian of the wild free roaming horses and burros to manage’ them, Congress intended to permit the animals’ custodian to subvert the primary policy of the statute by capturing and removing from the wild the very animals that Congress sought to protect from being captured and removed from the wild.”
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US Fish & Wildlife Service Plans to Slaughter Horses at Taxpayer Expense! (Part 1)
US Fish and Wildlife Service Appears Poised to Ship Sheldon Range
Wild Horses to Slaughter at Taxpayer Expense!
6 June, 2006
By: Susan Pohlman, Valerie James-Patton and John Holland
The Sheldon plan is darkly troubling at every level. It is a plan to eradicate an icon of the west for NO scientifically established reason. It would reward with brutal betrayal the descendants of the very horses that made it possible for the United States government to conquer the West. It would enrich those who will almost certainly send these beautiful creatures to a frightening and brutal end. And it is a plan to cover this all up with the kind of false assurances and nebulous front organizations that make a mockery of public stewardship. And finally, it is a plan that ignores decades of legislative environmental safeguards and substitutes sweet-heart deals made in private for openness and accountability.
http://www.aowha.org/notices/sheldon0601.html
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The Sheldon Wildlife Refuge said it would give its animals to contractors, who would find safe, long term homes for the horses.
The wildlife services said it would follow up to insure the animals were in safe, long term homes. It was John Kasbohm,the Director
in Sheldon, who was to follow up. He did not. John made a few calls and a few visits to people like Stan Palmer in Miss., Phyllis Strecker
and Carlton Grey Parker in Tx. who were contractors, but he did not visit the people who took the horses. Some of the called takers from
the contractors admitted freely they took the horses to slaughter. One even bragged about it on FACEBOOK. John Kasbohm seemed
unconcerned saying to me, “Somes get good homes, Somes don’t, oh well.” This is what we people work hard for to give up our taxes to
cold-hearted, liars who have no conscience when it comes to brutally killing innocent animals. To this day I mourn for these slaughtered
Sheldon horses and hope you do as well. They are not to be forgotten.
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“Mourn the dead and fight like Hell for the Living”.
Mother Jones
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Quite frankly, this makes me want to throw up. Chris Stewart is a complete ass, and has never wanted anything more than to eradicate the wild horses. RTF is in this for themselves, not the horses, only themselves.
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Don’t insult the Asses of the world! They are much wiser and kinder than Stewart could ever comprehend.
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If they were proud of this proposal and alliance with Stewart and Company it would have been transparent from the very beginning. It was not, however. Lots of hard working wild horse advocates have risen to the challenge in the betrayal of this collaboration. Of course, this benefits RTF in the future, it sets them up quite well actually if it goes through. Only a few horses will be better for it but not the majority. Many of the wild horses already go to private property and private facilities once they get rounded up, that is where the grey area has always been before they do the inventory, who knows how many get “lost” in the process? Axtell Utah is one of those places. They just want the land, the horses protect the land and vice versa, once they get taken off, the land opens up without those other protections. It is setting up the future not only for RTF but it earmarks the public lands for the dirty agendas that they used to rally against. Shame. Does greedy pie taste better on that side of the fence?
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Two reports issued by the BLM for internal use only, The Herd Management Option Plans from October 2008, and the Team Conference Calls Report from July-September 2008 contain astonishing proposals to manipulate the WFRHBA and NEPA, eliminate the wild horses and burros altogether from the wild, and until they can be euthanized or sold most likely for slaughter, sterilize them. Team members discussed that to keep the animals in LTH on public lands, they would create non-reproducing herds … ”
Also refer to [43 CFR 4700.0-6 (c]) which states: “Management activities affecting wild horses and burros shall be undertaken with the goal of maintaining free-roaming behavior.” By managing for STERILE animals we may be taking away their “free-roaming” behavior by altering the social interactions.” If the animals are no longer “free-roaming”, they are not wild and arguably could be considered livestock.
http://animallawcoalition.com/blms-final-solution-for-the-wild-horses-and-burros/
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The 1971 Act contains no language supporting managing sterilized horses as “free-roaming” or part of a “thriving natural ecological balance.” There can be nothing natural about non-reproducing herds.
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